tv antenna

[.429&H110]

The grandaughters have never seen
"hanging their clothes".

[metricmonkeywrench]

The granddaughters want to know
what's a antenna?

Dont forget about the tin foil

[.429&H110]

One of their favorite toys is a big pink dial telephone.
Phone is 70 years old, should be in a museum.

[kerplode]

I did this for a while. Got maybe 5 channels, 2 of which were PBS.

After a year, went back to cable.

You'd be better off with a fast internet connection and some streaming services, but that pretty quickly starts to approach the cost of cable service. The providers have cord cutters figured out. If you want decent content, you're gonna pay either way.

[Winger Ed.]

Dont forget about the tin foil

That's only for the 'rabbit ears' sitting on top of the TV.

[Petrol & Powder]

I dumped DirecTV years ago. Best thing I ever did. I stream internet programing through a smart TV and have an antenna for locally broadcast TV. I'm paying for the internet anyway and the satellite TV was costing WAY more than it was worth.
Why pay for something that is broadcast for free?

As for receiving broadcast TV over the air? That depends entirely on your location.
Terrain, distance to the transmitters and local conditions will dictate reception.

I purchased a $20 Yagi antenna, mounted it 7' off the ground and aimed it to capture the most stations I could. I get about a dozen different channels spilt between a few different transmit sites that range from 10 miles to about 60 miles away but.... YMMV.
Best $20 I ever spent. I got lucky, the coax was already in place from the old satellite system and I had some natural elevation I could take advantage of.

Bottom line, It's worth trying. The buy-in cost is minimal and the up-side is greatly reduced monthly expenses.

[Cast10]

I have two of these. Got from Wally. It says 80 mile range. If you have to go that far and are not mounting up high, get a amplifier too! One on my ranch has an amplifier inline and I get great TV from Front and Rear azimuth s. I’m on a hilltop and its up on a power pole about 15 feet. I have another at home and I live down in a valley. I get signal from a big city some 40 miles away WITHOUT an amplifier. I’m pleased.

Search OTA TV maps and it will show you where each antenna is in your area and the distance from you.


Attachment 276143

[jsizemore]

I got this one a couple years ago and still getting plenty of channels. 57. I get 3 sets of PBS. That accounts for 12 of them. I scavenged a mast from a house I worked on. It's 16ft. Kit contains clamps, cable and booster. I have lots of broadcast antennas in the area and not a lot of obstructions. Don't have to worry about pointing it in the right direction. Wind can cause some hash with reception.

https://longrangesignal.com/antop-at...ntenna-review/

TVfool.com is a great site to determine whether your location is worth the expense of an antenna. I was on the outer limit of receiving some stations and the ANTOP OMNI has no problem picking up the signal.

[Winger Ed.]

I have two of these. Got from Wally. It says 80 mile range.

Attachment 276143

That's the one we used about 65 miles out side of Dallas. It did a good job for what it is.
You had to tweek it just right to get some stations from one tower, and rotate the pole a little to pick up some different ones from another.
It worked like radio direction finder.

[William Yanda]

its what sticks out of the front of bugs, usually on the side opposite the legs.

[MrWolf]

A lot of services would be great IF there was decent internet service available. Not where I am as Frontier is in bankruptcy and out again. Typing this using a Hotspot from my phone which gets 2 bars if it sits on a lamp on my nightstand in the bedroom. I had to put up a 42' antenna to get even that. Still wouldn't trade my place for anything, well. Maybe for one with a small lake but working on making one.

[pworley1]

If you have a good internet connection, you can buy a $30.00 Roku stick and get more free channels than you can count.

[contender1]

I live in the mountains. Lots of terrain between me & towers. According to the FCC site listed above,, My ability to get much isn't worth trying an antenna. I show only one channel as a strong signal.

I would scrap the TV all together but there are a few things I do enjoy occasionally. Plus,, while it's liberal & biased,, we do want to catch the local news. (Keeping up with what crap is going on around us.)


I saw a channel once when I was traveling and in a motel,, called "Retro TV" and it was actually playing older stuff that in my opinion was much better than a lot of stuff out there now. Sadly,, I have no clue as to where it was or how to get it locally.

[Blanket]

live in the boonies, limited satellite internet and only broadcast tv. Have directional antenna and get about 30 channels but about half are duplicates

[TCFAN]

We had Dish TV for years.Where we live nothing was available with a antenna so Dish or Direct was all we had. Internet was only available with satellite and was slow and had data caps.
A new company came into the area with fast internet with NO data caps and very fast speed.I went to Wal-Mart and got a ROKU thing that plugged into the back of my TV and now we have all the free channels that we can watch plus the local news live from Springfield MO on KY-3
I have not paid a dime since for TV and our internet bill is lower than with the satellite company we had before.We still have commercials on the tv just like with Dish but now I don't have to pay to watch them.

[waksupi]

I'm in a fringe area, so have a long range antenna. I pick up eleven stations usually, although weather conditions makes that an unsure thing all the time. If conditions are right, I pick up six more. I can turn the mast and pick up another six. I should really get one with a rotor! I've considered trying to run two in conjunction. No idea if it would work. I'm also in an area where there are a lot of mountains. If you are out in the plains country, I suspect you would pick up more.

[bangerjim]

If you have a good internet connection, you can buy a $30.00 Roku stick and get more free channels than you can count.

I have RoKu on 3 TV's (besides DirecTV) for getting Netflix and Disney+ and what is "free" on those other channels is totally carp in my opinion. Stuff I would never watch and littered with commercials that hack in every few minutes in the movies.

Watch what you want. I just like spending my limited TV time commercial free with a DVR. Cost is not a consideration to my entertainment venues.

[1006]

I am 35 miles Southwest of Atlanta. I get 35 or more stations (Fox, NBC, CBS, No PBS and No ABC) with an outdoor antenna purchased at WalMart. I prefer the commercial broadcast......I use the commercials for bathroom breaks, snacks, etc. My wife prefers the services from Netflix, Disney, Sling, etc that we get through in internet.

[.429&H110]

My poor children grew up without broadcast TV. Internet was very slow twisted pair to a modem. We lived half way up Moose mtn, north end of Hanover NH. Moose mtn blocked all of everything, even the primitive satellites were behind the ridge. We were five miles from cable. So for something to do, I put up two lengths of 2" pipe buckled to the peak of the house seriously grounded to two old iron radiators buried deep with a sack of salt. I was told, the better the grounding, the better the antenna, and that lot was a lightning magnet, house had lightning rods on a tin roof. Built 40 feet of pipe staging to put up the biggest rotor and antenna and booster and lightning arrestor that Radio Shack could get. Was a marvel: small cape house with a giant antenna. I could get Mt Ascutny 70 miles down VT and Montreal 150 miles away. But still no Manchester. Watching TV in French made my daughter quite fluent with a Quebec accent. Montreal Canadiens hockey was great, fun to hear the crowd all sing O Canada together in French.

[Outpost75]

I live in in the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia. Our Frontier internet is too slow for video streaming and is unreliable. The FCC link above confirms that we receive over the air only two TV channels with a strong or moderately adequate signal. I have a ten-element log-periodic UHF-only antenna on a Channel Master rotor. WDVM-25 in Hagerstown has four digital sub-channels. 25-1 features local programming, news and weather, 25-2 is "Escape," a mix of Court TV, Unsolved Mysteries and various iterations that I call "White Trash TV", 25-3 is the "Grit" channel described as "television with backbone" mostly old TV serial Westerns and great TCM classic movies. 25-4 is "Laff" featuring vintage TV sitcoms. Maryland Public Television Channel 31 has four digital sub-channels with a good mix of high quality local and PBS programming. I especially like Maryland Farm and Harvest and Outdoors Maryland, the high quality PBS mysteries, dramas and documentaries BBC and NHK news. The "Create" channel has all the cooking and travel shows, This Old House, Antique Roadshow, etc. Altogether a reasonable mix. I have not watched mainstream NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX network TV in 20 years. I don't miss it. Over 20 years I have a accumulated substantial DVD collection so that I don't have to pay to surf through 256 channels which have nothing I want to watch. So I can binge watch Foyles War, Prime Suspect, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Miami Vice, Law & Order, Beck, or The Octopus anytime I like.